Update: The manuscript is complete and the book is now in the process of being edited and formatted. This fall, after the field season winds down, I will get to work converting part of this website into something that complements/supplements the book (which, it turns out, will be titled Tracks and Sign of Insects and Other Invertebrates). Stay tuned!

Invertebrate Tracks & Sign

This is a book that I have always wished existed, and I'm excited to have the opportunity to create it--a guide to all those mysteries you come across that aren't explained in any field guides. Invertebrate Tracks & Sign will be published in early 2010 by Stackpole, publisher of Mark Elbroch's Bird Tracks & Sign and Mammal Tracks & Sign. This photograph-filled book will cover North American insects, spiders, millipedes, crustaceans, gastropods, worms, and their relatives, and the following types of sign (the links are to photos of signs I'm looking for help identifying):

•   Tracks & trails
•   Burrows
•   Galleries in wood
•   Feeding sign on vegetation, including leaf mines
•   Galls
•   Frass
•   Nests
•   Webs (spider and otherwise)
•   Eggs, egg cases, & egg sacs
•   Exuviae
•   Larval cases
•   Pupae, pupal chambers, & cocoons
•   Signs of parasitism & predation

I have traveled around the U.S. collecting photos and observations for the book, but of course there are some things I have been unable to find. Below is a list of some photos I'm still looking for; I will revise and refine it periodically. Feel free to make suggestions of other things to include, if you think I'm missing something. If you are interested in contributing photos or helping in any other way, please email me at ceiseman(AT)gmail(DOT)com. All photos that are not mine will be credited in the photos' captions. Note that I need to have all the photos together by early 2009.

•   Leaf rolled by a Carolina leaf-rolling cricket
•   Distinctive egg sacs and egg cases of known spider and insect taxa. Priorities include Argiope spp., hydrophilids, and the mud cells made by certain carabids (Brachinus, Galeritula, Chlaenius, Pterostichus, Craspedonotus, Carabus, Calosoma)
•   Eggs of reduviids, corixids, and katydids; Sialis eggs of the upright variety
•   Helicopsychid and various other distinctive caddisfly cases
•   Whirligig pupal chamber
•   Trapdoor spider burrows; examples of wafer, cork, and folding doors would be ideal
•   Signs of Strepsiptera and dryinids
•   Monochamus egg niche
•   Bark stripping by European hornet
•   Mud nests of known wasps and bees (other than the most obvious ones)
•   Distinctive signs of known wood-boring taxa (beetles, moths, horntails)
•   Distinctive galls and leaf mines of known taxa

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